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  <div class="section" id="s-django-s-release-process">
<span id="django-s-release-process"></span><h1>Django’s release process<a class="headerlink" href="#django-s-release-process" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<div class="section" id="s-official-releases">
<span id="s-id1"></span><span id="official-releases"></span><span id="id1"></span><h2>Official releases<a class="headerlink" href="#official-releases" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Since version 1.0, Django’s release numbering works as follows:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Versions are numbered in the form <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B</span></code> or <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B.C</span></code>.</li>
<li><code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B</span></code> is the <em>feature release</em> version number. Each version will be mostly
backwards compatible with the previous release. Exceptions to this rule will
be listed in the release notes.</li>
<li><code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">C</span></code> is the <em>patch release</em> version number, which is incremented for bugfix
and security releases. These releases will be 100% backwards-compatible with
the previous patch release. The only exception is when a security or data
loss issue can’t be fixed without breaking backwards-compatibility. If this
happens, the release notes will provide detailed upgrade instructions.</li>
<li>Before a new feature release, we’ll make alpha, beta, and release candidate
releases. These are of the form <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B</span> <span class="pre">alpha/beta/rc</span> <span class="pre">N</span></code>, which means the
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Nth</span></code> alpha/beta/release candidate of version <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B</span></code>.</li>
</ul>
<p>In git, each Django release will have a tag indicating its version number,
signed with the Django release key. Additionally, each release series has its
own branch, called <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/A.B.x</span></code>, and bugfix/security releases will be
issued from those branches.</p>
<p>For more information about how the Django project issues new releases for
security purposes, please see <a class="reference internal" href="security.html"><span class="doc">our security policies</span></a>.</p>
<dl class="glossary docutils">
<dt id="term-feature-release">Feature release</dt>
<dd>Feature releases (A.B, A.B+1, etc.) will happen roughly every eight months
– see <a class="reference internal" href="#id2">release process</a> for details. These releases will contain new
features, improvements to existing features, and such.</dd>
<dt id="term-patch-release">Patch release</dt>
<dd><p class="first">Patch releases (A.B.C, A.B.C+1, etc.) will be issued as needed, to fix
bugs and/or security issues.</p>
<p class="last">These releases will be 100% compatible with the associated feature release,
unless this is impossible for security reasons or to prevent data loss.
So the answer to “should I upgrade to the latest patch release?” will always
be “yes.”</p>
</dd>
<dt id="term-long-term-support-release">Long-term support release</dt>
<dd><p class="first">Certain feature releases will be designated as long-term support (LTS)
releases. These releases will get security and data loss fixes applied for
a guaranteed period of time, typically three years.</p>
<p class="last">See <a class="reference external" href="https://www.djangoproject.com/download/">the download page</a> for the releases that have been designated for
long-term support.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-release-cadence">
<span id="release-cadence"></span><h2>Release cadence<a class="headerlink" href="#release-cadence" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Starting with Django 2.0, version numbers will use a loose form of <a class="reference external" href="http://semver.org/">semantic
versioning</a> such that each version following an LTS will
bump to the next “dot zero” version. For example: 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 (LTS), 3.0,
3.1, 3.2 (LTS), etc.</p>
<p>SemVer makes it easier to see at a glance how compatible releases are with each
other. It also helps to anticipate when compatibility shims will be removed.
It’s not a pure form of SemVer as each feature release will continue to have a
few documented backwards incompatibilities where a deprecation path isn’t
possible or not worth the cost. Also, deprecations started in an LTS release
(X.2) will be dropped in a non-dot-zero release (Y.1) to accommodate our policy
of keeping deprecation shims for at least two feature releases. Read on to the
next section for an example.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-deprecation-policy">
<span id="s-internal-release-deprecation-policy"></span><span id="deprecation-policy"></span><span id="internal-release-deprecation-policy"></span><h2>Deprecation policy<a class="headerlink" href="#deprecation-policy" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>A feature release may deprecate certain features from previous releases. If a
feature is deprecated in feature release A.x, it will continue to work in all
A.x versions (for all versions of x) but raise warnings. Deprecated features
will be removed in the B.0 release, or B.1 for features deprecated in the last
A.x feature release to ensure deprecations are done over at least 2 feature
releases.</p>
<p>So, for example, if we decided to start the deprecation of a function in
Django 4.2:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Django 4.2 will contain a backwards-compatible replica of the function which
will raise a <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">RemovedInDjango51Warning</span></code>.</li>
<li>Django 5.0 (the version that follows 4.2) will still contain the
backwards-compatible replica.</li>
<li>Django 5.1 will remove the feature outright.</li>
</ul>
<p>The warnings are silent by default. You can turn on display of these warnings
with the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">python</span> <span class="pre">-Wd</span></code> option.</p>
<p>A more generic example:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>X.0</li>
<li>X.1</li>
<li>X.2 LTS</li>
<li>Y.0: Drop deprecation shims added in X.0 and X.1.</li>
<li>Y.1: Drop deprecation shims added in X.2.</li>
<li>Y.2 LTS: No deprecation shims dropped (while Y.0 is no longer supported,
third-party apps need to maintain compatibility back to X.2 LTS to ease
LTS to LTS upgrades).</li>
<li>Z.0: Drop deprecation shims added in Y.0 and Y.1.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-supported-versions">
<span id="s-backwards-compatibility-policy"></span><span id="supported-versions"></span><span id="backwards-compatibility-policy"></span><h2>Supported versions<a class="headerlink" href="#supported-versions" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>At any moment in time, Django’s developer team will support a set of releases to
varying levels. See <a class="reference external" href="https://www.djangoproject.com/download/#supported-versions">the supported versions section</a> of the download
page for the current state of support for each version.</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">The current development master will get new features and bug fixes
requiring non-trivial refactoring.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Patches applied to the master branch must also be applied to the last feature
release branch, to be released in the next patch release of that feature
series, when they fix critical problems:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Security issues.</li>
<li>Data loss bugs.</li>
<li>Crashing bugs.</li>
<li>Major functionality bugs in new features of the latest stable release.</li>
<li>Regressions from older versions of Django.</li>
</ul>
<p>The rule of thumb is that fixes will be backported to the last feature
release for bugs that would have prevented a release in the first place
(release blockers).</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Security fixes and data loss bugs will be applied to the current master, the
last two feature release branches, and any other supported long-term
support release branches.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Documentation fixes generally will be more freely backported to the last
release branch. That’s because it’s highly advantageous to have the docs for
the last release be up-to-date and correct, and the risk of introducing
regressions is much less of a concern.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>As a concrete example, consider a moment in time halfway between the release of
Django 5.1 and 5.2. At this point in time:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>Features will be added to development master, to be released as Django 5.2.</li>
<li>Critical bug fixes will be applied to the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/5.1.x</span></code> branch, and
released as 5.1.1, 5.1.2, etc.</li>
<li>Security fixes and bug fixes for data loss issues will be applied to
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">master</span></code> and to the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/5.1.x</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/5.0.x</span></code>, and
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/4.2.x</span></code> (LTS) branches. They will trigger the release of <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">5.1.1</span></code>,
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">5.0.5</span></code>, <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">4.2.8</span></code>, etc.</li>
<li>Documentation fixes will be applied to master, and, if easily backported, to
the latest stable branch, <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">5.1.x</span></code>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-release-process">
<span id="s-id2"></span><span id="release-process"></span><span id="id2"></span><h2>Release process<a class="headerlink" href="#release-process" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Django uses a time-based release schedule, with feature releases every eight
months or so.</p>
<p>After each feature release, the release manager will announce a timeline for
the next feature release.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-release-cycle">
<span id="release-cycle"></span><h3>Release cycle<a class="headerlink" href="#release-cycle" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>Each release cycle consists of three parts:</p>
<div class="section" id="s-phase-one-feature-proposal">
<span id="phase-one-feature-proposal"></span><h4>Phase one: feature proposal<a class="headerlink" href="#phase-one-feature-proposal" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h4>
<p>The first phase of the release process will include figuring out what major
features to include in the next version. This should include a good deal of
preliminary work on those features – working code trumps grand design.</p>
<p>Major features for an upcoming release will be added to the wiki roadmap page,
e.g. <a class="reference external" href="https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Version1.11Roadmap">https://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Version1.11Roadmap</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-phase-two-development">
<span id="phase-two-development"></span><h4>Phase two: development<a class="headerlink" href="#phase-two-development" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h4>
<p>The second part of the release schedule is the “heads-down” working period.
Using the roadmap produced at the end of phase one, we’ll all work very hard to
get everything on it done.</p>
<p>At the end of phase two, any unfinished features will be postponed until the
next release.</p>
<p>Phase two will culminate with an alpha release. At this point, the
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/A.B.x</span></code> branch will be forked from <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">master</span></code>.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-phase-three-bugfixes">
<span id="phase-three-bugfixes"></span><h4>Phase three: bugfixes<a class="headerlink" href="#phase-three-bugfixes" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h4>
<p>The last part of a release cycle is spent fixing bugs – no new features will
be accepted during this time. We’ll try to release a beta release one month
after the alpha and a release candidate one month after the beta.</p>
<p>The release candidate marks the string freeze, and it happens at least two
weeks before the final release. After this point, new translatable strings
must not be added.</p>
<p>During this phase, committers will be more and more conservative with
backports, to avoid introducing regressions. After the release candidate, only
release blockers and documentation fixes should be backported.</p>
<p>In parallel to this phase, <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">master</span></code> can receive new features, to be released
in the <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">A.B+1</span></code> cycle.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-bug-fix-releases">
<span id="bug-fix-releases"></span><h3>Bug-fix releases<a class="headerlink" href="#bug-fix-releases" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h3>
<p>After a feature release (e.g. A.B), the previous release will go into bugfix
mode.</p>
<p>The branch for the previous feature release (e.g. <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">stable/A.B-1.x</span></code>) will
include bugfixes. Critical bugs fixed on master must <em>also</em> be fixed on the
bugfix branch; this means that commits need to cleanly separate bug fixes from
feature additions. The developer who commits a fix to master will be
responsible for also applying the fix to the current bugfix branch.</p>
</div>
</div>
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  <h3><a href="../contents.html">Table of Contents</a></h3>
  <ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Django’s release process</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#official-releases">Official releases</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#release-cadence">Release cadence</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#deprecation-policy">Deprecation policy</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#supported-versions">Supported versions</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#release-process">Release process</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#release-cycle">Release cycle</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#phase-one-feature-proposal">Phase one: feature proposal</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#phase-two-development">Phase two: development</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#phase-three-bugfixes">Phase three: bugfixes</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#bug-fix-releases">Bug-fix releases</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
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